Plymouth County Registry of Deeds accepts electronic filing

It’s a routine but often frustrating part of the job for real estate attorneys: the trip to the Registry of Deeds to file a property transaction.

Steve Adams

It’s a routine but often frustrating part of the job for real estate attorneys: the trip to the Registry of Deeds to file a property transaction.

Now the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds is enabling them to accomplish the same tasks with a few clicks of a mouse. After a two-month trial period, a new electronic filing program began full-scale operation last month.

“It’ll make our office more efficient,” Plymouth County Register of Deeds John Buckley Jr. said.

Plymouth County first started using Simplifile to accept nontime-sensitive documents in June and began accepting mortgages and deeds in August.

To be able to file electronically, people need to set up accounts with Simplifile, the Provo, Utah, electronic filing company selected by the Plymouth registry as its vendor.

They then can log onto a Web site and submit and review documents such as deeds, mortgages and liens. The Plymouth registry becomes the third in the state to enable electronic filing with Simplifile, along with the Hampden registry in Springfield and the Middlesex County’s northern district registry in Lowell.

“It’s costly because if you’re the attorney, it pulls you out of the office,” said Paul Roth, regional sales director for Simplifile and a real estate attorney in Burlington. “If you’re overnighting, it’s a fairly good charge.”

If any changes need to be made to the documents, the filing of the new mortgage can be delayed, holding up the transfer of the proceeds to the homeowner, Roth said.

At a real estate closing, attorneys historically had to go to the registry and run a title search to make sure no new attachments have been placed on the property before they file the deed.

With electronic filing, the process can take place in the lawyer’s office or another remote location. All that’s required is a Simplifile account and an Internet connection.

Simplifile customers log onto a Web site and enter financial account information, which is stored in a third-party clearinghouse that transfers closing fees to the registry.

Registry employees review the documents and return a scanned image to the lawyer. The review generally takes less than 15 minutes, Buckley said.

Basic Simplifile accounts cost $395 a year, plus a fee of $5 for each document. It offers discounts to attorneys affiliated with certain title insurance companies, which can drop the annual account fee to $295 and the document fee to $4.50.

Several electronic filing companies made presentations to a statewide group of registers of deeds, Buckley said. Plymouth County selected Simplifile because it offered to set up the system at no cost to the registry, he said, and the system seemed to be working well in Lowell and Springfield.

Making property recording more convenient has been a priority for Buckley. The registry has satellite offices in Brockton and Rockland.

Adoption of the system is expected to grow as publicity spreads. About 80 employees at area law firms attended an informational seminar on electronic filing hosted by the Plymouth registry last week.